One of the main key factors that determine a healthy level of self-esteem is a strong sense of self. Your capacity of what you can do and achieve in life can only be limited by your self-image, how you see yourself, and how you value yourself. It’s been said that many lottery winners lose almost all of their windfall money quickly, and many successful multi-millionaire businessmen whose business are wiped out overnight often bounce back and recover quickly. Although their fortune changed drastically, their self-value has not. The level of wealth is ‘equalized’ by the value that we put on ourselves. Wealth is only one of the many indicators, there are also social, health, career etc.

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers” ~Harry S. Truman

I developed the habit of feeding my mind with voracious reading since I was a little boy. Whenever I’d go out with my family to the shopping mall, I’d always end up at the bookstore section. It’s not unusual for me to spend at least a couple of hours there.

Books….books…books….

Over the years, my list of books have grown into libraries. These days, I’d also buy electronic books instead of physical ones. I’ve even subscribed myself to audio books membership with Audible for more than two years. I like listening to audio books when I couldn’t read, like when I’m driving or when I simply wanna rest my eyes on bed.

My books have become my valued personal asset. They’re mostly non-fictions, in the areas of personal development, career, health, sports/fitness, finance, travel and spiritual. If someone comes to my home and see the collections I have (both physical and electronic), he’d be impressed.

Recently, I sat in a planning meeting with a group of young committees of a local organization. In the middle of an agenda, the leader stated adamantly who he doesn’t want to work with and what he doesn’t want to experience again because of a past fallout. But when asked what is it that he really wants for this team to achieve, he paused silently and thought for a while, and then simply uttered a blank “errrmmm….”.

I wasn’t sure if the leader provided any useful direction to his project team in the first place. It could have helped if he explicitly expressed his intentions and purpose to clarify the main objectives and the desired outcomes.

It’s like providing a road map without knowing where to go; the leader was telling his team where not to go and what not to do, but didn’t state the destination and how to get there! Did he know his desired destination in the first place? I really couldn’t tell! He was more driven to avoid past pains than to move towards something new. Fine. Maybe he had learned something useful from his past undertakings which had shaped his present approach, but his team doesn’t know the pain and didn’t need to. They didn’t need to know something unknown to move away from, but something to move towards to. Something clear, so they could fix their eyes on the target. Isn’t that more useful?

There really are just 2 questions that we need to answer to have what we want in life:

1) What is it that I want?

2) So, what’s stopping me from having what I want?

If we can truly answer the 2 questions, then, there’s nothing in life that can get in our way to stop us from having what we want.

What Do You Want?

Back to the first question, what is it that you truly, really want? Many times when asked that, people would say I want a better job, more money, a raise, a good-looking partner, bigger house and car, a nice vacation to escape from whatever they’re going through etc. If we honestly look deep within, we would not really want these things, but what these things can make us feel. The feeling of being recognized, of owning bigger things, of feeling important or feeling more secured, comfortable etc.